PLESSY vs FERGUSON
1 – separate railway accommodations for the white
FACTS:
Petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a resident
of the State of Louisiana, of mixed descent, in the
proportion of seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth
African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not
discernible in him.
On June 7, 1892, he engaged and paid for a first-class
passage on the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans
to Covington, in the same State, and thereupon entered a
passenger train, and took possession of a vacant seat in a
coach where passengers of the white race were
accommodated.
The railroad company was incorporated by the laws of
Louisiana as a common carrier, and was not authorized to
distinguish between citizens according to their race. But,
notwithstanding this, petitioner was required by the
conductor, under penalty of ejection from said train and
imprisonment, to vacate said coach and occupy another
seat in a coach assigned by said company for persons not
of the white race, and for no other reason than that
petitioner was of the colored race.
Upon petitioner’s refusal to comply with such order, he
was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from
said coach and hurried off to and imprisoned in the parish
jail of New Orleans, and there held to answer a charge
made by such officer to the effect that he was guilty of
having criminally violated an act of the General Assembly
of the State, approved July 10, 1890, in such case made
and provided.
Petitioner was subsequently brought before the recorder of
the city for preliminary examination and committed for trial
to the criminal District Court for the parish of Orleans,
where an information was filed against him in the matter
above set forth, for a violation of the above act, which act
the petitioner affirmed to be null and void, because in
conflict with the Constitution of the United States.
ISSUE:
W/N Act 1890, No. 111, p. 152 (separation of colored to
whites) violated the 13th and 14th amendment? NO.
RULING:
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL” principle.
Act. 1890, No. 111, p. 152:
Sec.
and colored races secured by a partition
Sec. 2 – officers shall have power to enforce this
separation
Sec. 3 – penalties for refusal or neglect of officers; the act
does not apply to nurses attending to other races
Constitutionality of this act is attacked as conflicting with
13th amendment abolishing slavery, and 14th prohibiting
restrictive legislation on the part of states.
13th amendment - sought to end involuntary servitude,
which is not the case. A statute that merely implies a legal
distinction between whites and colored races has no
tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or
reestablish a state of involuntary servitude.
14th amendment - The object of the amendment was
undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two
races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could
not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political,
equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms
unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even
requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable
to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the
inferiority of either race to the other, and have been
generally, if not universally, recognized as within the
competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their
police power.
Made an analogy with the inequality of children and adults,
men and women. Stated:
Equal protection applied to the actual and various
conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the
assertion that men and women are legally clothed with the
same civil and political powers, and that children and adults
are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the
same treatment, but only that the rights of all, as they are
settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the
paternal consideration and protection of the law for their
maintenance and security."
The plaintiff’s argument consists in the assumption that the
enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored
race with badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by
reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the
colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.
Court also said that, If the two races are to meet upon
terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural
affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits, and
a voluntary consent of individuals.
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to
abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and
the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the
difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political
rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the
other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other
socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put
them upon the same plane.
The above argument conceded the impossibility of social
equality under any government.
DISPOSITIVE:
The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not
only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and
irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but
will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of
state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which
the people of the United States had in view when they
adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution, by one
of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of
the United States and of the States in which they
respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities,
as citizens, the States are forbidden to abridge.

Judgment of lower court affirmed.
Mr. Justice Harlan, DISSENT:
If there is one thing clear about the majority decision, it is
that it clarified that the State regulates the use of a public
highway by citizens of the United States solely upon the
basis of race.
What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more
certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust
between these races, than state enactments which, in fact,
proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior
and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public
coaches occupied by white citizens. That, as all will admit,
is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in
Louisiana.

No legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race
the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude
are involved. Indeed, such legislation as that here in wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality
question is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be
which pertains to citizenship, National and State, but with justified upon any legal grounds.
the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone within the United
States. For the reasons stated, I am constrained to withhold my
assent from the opinion and judgment of the majority.
The 13th amendment not only struck down the institution of
slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it
prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that
constitute badges of slavery or servitude.

Together with the 14th amendment, the two liberties will

protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and
citizenship. Finally, and to the end that no citizen should be
denied, on account of his race, the privilege of participating
in the political control of his country, it was declared by the
Fifteenth Amendment that “the right of citizens of the
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State on account of race, color or
previous condition of servitude.”

It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does

not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule
applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this
argument does not meet the difficulty. Everyone knows that
the statute in question had its origin in the purpose not so
much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied
by blacks as to exclude colored people from coaches
occupied by or assigned to white persons. Effectively, it
interferes with the personal freedom of citizens.